SS Obersturmführer Sören Kam, Nazi war criminal.

19-09-2018

gestapo

Søren Kam was a Danish commander, SS Obersturmführer, in the Waffen SS of Nazi Germany.. He was wanted for murder in Denmark and listed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as one of the most wanted Nazi war criminal. Kam was born on 2 November 1921 in Copenhagen, Denmark as the second of six children to agent Rasmus Hansen Kam (b. 1891 in Aunslev,  Funen and wife Inger born Hermansen (b. 1897 in Copenhagen. The young Kam was a member of the youth faction of the DNSAP (NSU)   where he was a close associate of Christian Frederick von Schalburg , one of his so called “blood boys”. In 1939 Kam was entered in the army levy roll for Copenhagen with the name Sören Kam. Kam’s family stayed in the villa after he moved out until his father sold it in 1947. The same year Kam’s older brother delisted his phone number from the phone book and two years later his father did the same.

Kam volunteered with the SS in June 1940 and served with the 5th SS Panzergrenadier Division “Wiking”, commander SS-Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner on the Eastern Front. He was transferred to SS Junkerschule in Bad Tolz     and was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer. The Kam brothers in the Waffen-SS (from left to right): Poul, Søren and Erik.  The brothers were photographed in 1943 and they fought in the ranks of the Wiking Division.From 1 May to 2 September 1943, Sören Kam was heading the school at Hoveltegaard responsible for the training of new members of the Schalburg Corps  under SS Sturmbannführer Christian Frederik von Schalburg, here with his son Alex and Sören Kam . The initial six week training had 50-70 recruits

According to Efraim Zuroff of the Wiesenthal Centre, in August 1943 Kam participated as a Waffen-SS soldier in a robbery during which the birth records of the Jewish community in Denmark were stolen. He thereby ensured that the German file on Danish Jews was as complete as possible, in preparation for the attempt to arrest and deport them in October that year. Kam denied the allegation.

From 15 July to 2 September 1943 Kam had seven meetings with SS Obergruppenführer Karl Rudolf Werner Best  , whose service calendar describes Kam as commander of the Schalburg Corps. After the war, Best was part of a network that helped former Nazis and spent his time “campaigning for a general amnesty”. He died in Mülheim on 23-06-1989, age 85.

During the week before Saturday August 28, 1943 Kam  participated in one such meeting with among others Best, who on the morning of that Saturday met with the Danish prime minister Erik Scavenius  to make the demands that the following day led the Germans to officially dissolve the Danish government and institute martial law.

On the evening of 30 August 1943 or after midnight in Lundtofte, next to Lundtofte Airfield Søren Kam and two others killed newspaper editor Carl Henrik Clemmensen,   age 42, who was struck while standing by eight bullets fired from three different pistols. Kam later gave different explanations for his participation, lastly that the three shot the unarmed newspaper editor in self-defense.

The September 1943 issue of De frie Danske  proclaimed Kam and Danish SSer Knut Flemming Helweg-Larsen    as Schalburg-bandits and the murderers of Clemmensen. The June 1944 issue denounced a female member of the Nazi Party, along with Carl Henrik Clemmensen’s murderers, namely Flemming Helweg-Larsen and Søren Kam. Knut Flemming was executed age 34 on 05-01-1946 in Kopenhagen.

On 15 February 1945 the newspaper Politiken brought an official statement from Berlin via Reuters that on 7 February Adolf Hitler had awarded Kam, a company Commander of the SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment “Germania” , now under command of SS-Oberscharführer Karl Ullrich  the Knight Cross for “especially decisive action in the battle against the enemy” making Sören Kam the third Dane to receive this award.  Karl Ullrich survived the war and died old age 85 on 08-05-1996. The statement proceeded to mention that Kam had been wounded in battle several times and for battlefield bravery been awarded the Iron Cross Second and First Class, the Infantry Assault Badge , Close Combat Clasp  and the silver Wound Badge  and that he had seen combat in the battles of Dnipropetrovski, Kharkov, Cherkasy, Kovel and Warsaw..

While in 1946 the Danish authorities presumed Kam to be dead they executed  Helweg-Larsen for his part in the murder of Clemmensen. According to the evidence presented in the trial, Clemmensen had been killed using three different pistols firing eight bullets all impacting him while he was standing. A third accomplice in the murder the SS-man Jörgen Valdemar Bitsch  was held in the Frosley Prison Camp after the liberation, but managed to escape and his whereabouts remain unknown. Bitsch escaped to South America and probably died there on  31 mei 1955.

After the war Kam was closely associated with Heinrich Himmler‘s daughter Gudrun Burwitz  and her network Stille Hilfe (Silent Aid),  set up to support arrested, condemned or fugitive former SS men.” As of 1 April 2014, he was number five on Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of most wanted Nazi war criminals. 

On 23 March 2015 Sören Kam died in Kempten at the age of 93, two weeks after his wife.